The cranes are a mix of Liebherr conventional hammerhead cranes, 10 topless hammerhead and three electric luffing tower cranes from Comedil (the oldest less than a year old) and five new Favco 220DX diesel hydraulic luffing tower cranes.A separate business, known as Building Industry Supplies, has been set up to hire the cranes and 18 man/material hoists to Hutchies and other builders, with Hutchies having preference.The motivation for the move was, in part, that Hutchies had a lot of work in hand and was reluctant to use external suppliers when many of the cranes available for hire were 20 to 30 years old. Hutchies believed there was a general lack of interest in renewing the hire fleets – ironically, since Hutchies commenced its acquisition program there have been signs of change in the hire fleets.BIS crane manager Peter Glover says there will be a place for the Favco diesel hydraulic cranes in the foreseeable future, with their superior line speed and lack of dependence on the power supply – which is inadequate in many parts of southeast Queensland.BIS carries four generators in its fleet so that some projects with electric cranes can commence using a generator and switch to mains power after a substation upgrade. Comedil flat top CTT331 and CTL260 luffing electric crane in Hutchinson Builders colours.
